Onward and upward

I've now virtually completed my 21st year at NYU Law School, and my 29th year in legal academia (I was at the University of Chicago Law School for my first 8 years in the biz).  Whew, things seem to be moving kind of fast.

All that remains for the semester is deciding, with my colleague, on final grades in my colloquium (hint: given grades on weekly papers, it probably won't be much of a surprise in most or all cases), plus reading and grading a few longer term papers that are also on my docket.  Other than that, I'm done.  Leaving aside a summer institute appearance, I will next be seen in an NYU Law School classroom on the afternoon of Thursday, September 1, when I'll be teaching my first class of the fall semester in Survey of International Taxation.

As it happens, I only have at present about 2 weeks worth of summer vacation plans - I usually take a bit more, but possibly not this time around for various planning & coordination reasons.  So otherwise I'll usually be working on writing projects during regular business hours.

One main focus will be my ongoing book project on literature and high-end inequality.  To my immense relief, I just finished a short chapter on Dickens's A Christmas Carol, on top of 5 earlier chapters (3 of them on particular works of literature).  This project is still a bit of a leap of faith, however.  It's mostly quite different from other work that I've done, and I'm finding it a bit harder to write than my usual, plus the evaluative criteria that one should use are murkier.  That said, I like it, especially when it's going well.

My next projected chapter will be on Trollope's The Way We Live Now, but before getting to that I plan to do some more conventional / traditional (for me) writing, including perhaps a bit on international taxation.  I also have my next 2 speaking appearances, both in that area, to think about.

Next Thursday (May 12), perusal of this program will reveal to the sharp-eyed that I am the lunch speaker at the National Tax Association's 46th Annual Spring Symposium, to take place in Washington, D.C., at the Holiday Inn Capitol.  My remarks, which are pretty much ready, are informally entitled "Ten Observations Regarding International Tax Policy."  I'll post the somewhat terse slides afterwards, and may also turn the body of the talk into a short-ish piece that I might conceivably aim at, say, Tax Notes or Tax Notes International.  I don't plan to turn it into a full-blown article, however.

Then on Wednesday, June 1, I'll be speaking at a conference in Amsterdam entitled "Anti-BEPS Implementation in the EU - the Anti-Tax Avoidance Directive: the major implications for the Tax (Planning) Landscape in the EU."  My talk, on one of the afternoon panels, is entitled "The U.S. Response to OECD-BEPS and the EU State Aid Cases."  The conference is part of a co-sponsored series that involves, among other players, the Amsterdam Center for Tax Law and NYU Law School. My involvement in this conference might conceivably involve my also turning the talk into a short piece that would appear in a conference volume.